High cost of CIPD events deters all but the biggest HR divisions

Interesting to note that your ‘Charity begins at home’ feature came out the week after the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) conference (Personnel Today, 31 October).

Those of us working in the charity sector do so on tight budgets and cannot justify the enormous expense of CIPD events.

I am not surprised that the issue of spending on training has remained the same in the follow-up survey, as costs are being squeezed all the time.

Instead of expensive external courses, as a sector, we are far more innovative in using internal mechanisms to develop staff. We have been working with the Open University on a tailor-made management development programme, rather than sending everyone out on pricey external courses.

While this has been a major outlay for us, the results have been very encouraging. For example, it has helped us to reduce turnover and lower absence rates.

Judge us not by pure spend but rather by our outcomes. We are not all the same.